Brain Dump

Someone somewhere wrote something alarmingly stupid, and it wasn't even Mike Huckabee or another expected source. No, it was some woman, some journalist, I think. I thought I'd kick off a blog post by responding to it because it just begged for a response. I thought about it in the shower. Unfortunately, now that I'm here at the computer I have forgotten it. Maybe it will come back to me later.


There's a mathematician who works in the same office with me, at an answering service. I showed him a proof I was working up, one that I conceived years ago while working with another answering service. Q.E.D. = the more phone numbers there are in the pool, the greater the chance that any one number will be the author or recipient of a wrong-number call. At first this may seem counterintuitive since each number added to the pool changes the denominator to x + 1, diluting the chance that any one phone will be involved in that kind of minor accident. But this geometric "dilution" (for want of a better word, since I don't know a lot of math words) is set against the exponential increase in call volume caused by the addition of one phone or number to the pool. This time I graphed each, then graphed -- ooh, if only he would give my scratch pad back so I could remember! -- the product of both graphs, which was to represent the increase in call volume multiplied by the share of call volume attributed to each phone or number in the pool. And can you guess what I got? I got a 1:1 slope! Assuming that calling a wrong number is a function of how many different calls you could possibly make, each number added to the pool will directly increase the average caller's chance of calling (or getting) a wrong number. Now, Donnell (my co-worker mathematician, real name) seems to like this a lot and says we're going somewhere with it. He suggested I get some empirical data and I said our boss probably had some -- reams of it, now that I think about it!

I've long forgotten how to construct / format / put forward a proof, but I had a nice demonstration. Sometimes in college when I was awake in class and could manage a clear head (chemical interference notwithstanding) I would put together a nice demonstration. One I'm particularly proud of turned out to be completely wrong but it sparked a lively argument in class. The tutor (at St. John's we had "tutors" in preference to "professors") came at it as something that was different and unfamiliar but which actually seemed to work. Someone else found the weak spot, and it had to do with my mis-identification of a triangle. But that was really fun. I enjoyed the process of discovery even though at length I discovered that I was wrong.

Let me digress to say please don't anybody take psychotropic drugs unless you're certain you know and agree with your diagnosis and know everything you need to know about the drugs. After all was said and done I returned to the clinic that prescribed my disastrous meds and was told that my diagnosis had been incorrect (and not revealed to me) and that the pills "probably [hadn't done] me any good" (to put it mildly.) If you have an inkling that a doctor doesn't understand you, don't eat the pills they give you. And how could they understand you? They're doctors; they don't have time for stuff like that. In the end I was told I was suffering from depression and obsessive compulsive disorder, period. -- nothing I needed to dope up like a hippie for. If doctors didn't hire armies of lawyers to cover their behinds, I'd try to sue them for another try at an education.

Another thing about drugs -- patent medicines are based on molecules that are tweaked to be different from their natural counterparts precisely so that they can be patented. So unless you're so desperate that the cure (treatment, really) isn't worse than the disease, find a naturopathic doctor instead. Your body knows how to heal itself; drug companies know how to make money and bully the establishment.



Sweet sixteen. Every young lady should have that one day to dress and act like a queen -- one day to hold in her heart so it doesn't become an elusive dream. Someday she'll be toiling away at a dead-end job but she'll remember that deep inside she is that queen and always will be. She will have some idea of what that means because of the experience of a full-blown sweet sixteen party. Personally, I didn't get mine and didn't really want it. But it's more about women in general than about me. I have enough imagination so that I probably didn't really need my day to shine like that. But if every girl gets her day, nobody will be without that nourishing inner reinforcement.

Anyhow, I had friends who lent me gorgeous gowns to wear to parties, which more than makes up for wearing corduroys and a knit top on my sixteenth birthday and falling ill in the midst of the modest festivities.

Following this stream of consciousness I see Grey Valenti (real name -- why not?) a dear friend and a talented performer who had lots of awesome costumes. I don't remember whether she lent me any, but she told me where to get them -- Goodwill. Spot on, baby. I started stocking up. Grey also sort of lent me her boyfriend, in a limited way. It's like, I had a crush on this guy Max (not real name,) who eventually turned out to be going out with Grey. I still had a crush on him. She was still nice to me. He was still nice to me. And remember, I'm the girl who did the Charlotte Goodall routine all over campus. Grey stood back and allowed me to be a gushing, flag-waving cheerleader for her Max. Later on she would say, "No kidding, Kitty! He was nicer to you than he was to me that summer!!" Indeed he was. So if Max ever called and asked if I could do him a favor I'd say yes first and then ask what the favor was to be.

And the other kid who had a crush on Grey -- where's that sweetheart? Don't tell me facebook. I don't have time for facebook. Friend requests keep dropping into my mailbox. It's like "This is Your Life..." I don't have time for that. And what would I say to these people? Would I tell them that this is my blog, connecting my writings with my real name?